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Virginia maps out optional per-mile road fee program for 2022 launch
- susiecambria 5y agoI'm not a transportation or tech expert, but the idea that detailing in law the protection of user data will somehow make it come true is absurd. This said, not sure what the alternative is. From the article: One challenge may be convincing drivers there’s a benefit to installing a mileage tracking system in their vehicle and easing any privacy concerns about the device creating a data trail showing where they’ve been. The state work group recommends giving users the option of using either a GPS or non-GPS tracking system and shoring up data protection laws to safeguard any location-based information, similar to an existing law that shields information on vehicles passing through tolls. “Legislation passed to protect this data can be tailored to address when and how the information can be shared and used and can increase customer confidence that personal information is protected,” the interim report says. “Confidence in the protection of the data generated may enhance customer willingness to participate in the program.” Jonathan Gifford, director of the Center for Transportation Public-Private Partnership Policy at George Mason University, said the privacy issue is “a live one” but he thinks it can be resolved by giving users options about how their mileage is tracked and what happens to their data. “Some of the options out there do have a device that is plugged into your car’s data port and keeps track of when and where you drive but it doesn’t share that information,” he said. “It’s sort of a tracking device but it doesn’t share the data.”
- endgame 5y agoYeah, and they told us the contact-tracing databases would only be used for public health purposes. The only way to ensure privacy is to never collect the data.
- paulgb 5y agoAre there examples of it being used for other things? Not that I doubt you, I just haven’t read about that.
- nicois 5y agohttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-15/safewa-app-sparks-urgent-law-change-after-police-access-data/100201340 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-15/safewa-app-sparks-urg...
- andreareina 5y ago"The Singapore Police Force (SPF) can obtain TraceTogether data for criminal investigations, said Minister of State for Home Affairs Desmond Tan in Parliament on Monday (Jan 4)"[1] This was a reversal from earlier promises that it would only be used for contact tracing Covid19 exposures. [1] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/singapore-police-force-can-obtain-tracetogether-data-covid-19-384316 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/singapore-police-f...
- endgame 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28070335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28070335 has links to instances in DE, SG, and AU.
- djbebs 5y agoGerman police have been using it to track down theft
- fy20 5y agoIt's better than what happens in most of Europe where governments automatically track your vehicle's movements through cameras. At least you have a choice (for now).
- AlgorithmicTime 5y agoSimple solution, take an odometer reading every year and use that, and accept the slop from not knowing how many miles were on restricted access highway vs dirt road vs suburban street.
- collegeburner 5y agoThis is probably the best solution since it's already illegal to tamper with odometer reading. Maybe enable people to declare long out-of-state trip mileage, like their thousand-mile road trip, so they aren't paying state tax on that.
- pdkl95 5y ago> The goal for the revamped funding system, which also includes a higher gas tax rate and lower baseline vehicle registration fees, is to make sure drivers contribute their fair share to the costs of maintaining the roads they use The "fair share" most small cars - especially fuel efficiency focused designs that remove as much mass as possible - should be paying approximately $0. Road damage per-axel is proportional to the weight carried by the axel raised to the fourth power! A fully loaded 5 axel tractor trailer does thousands of times more damage than one of the small electric cars they are worried about taxing. The "fair" solution where maintenance costs are paid in proportion to the actual sources of damage would be to ignore most carts entirely and raising the registration fees on the vehicle actually damaging the roads the heavy trucks. As vehicle weight grows, their responsibility for maintenance costs exponentially.
- corty 5y agoWell, not exponentially, it is still just a power law. But I agree that taxes should be damage-based. Tax those lorries to hell, if they want lower taxes, they should buy one with more axles and more tires per axle.
- PietdeVries 5y agoI would assume they would just raise their prices. Like with shipping containers from China to the rest of the world - prices increased tenfold...
- corty 5y agoYes of course. But some will be more competitve by having less weigth-per-axle. So after one replacement-generation of trucks, roads will be in better shape because trucks are less prone to damage them on average. And in general, trucking goods needs to be more expensive anyways to make less pollution transport options like ships and trains more competitive. Consumers can also be made whole by removing vehicle taxes on cars or subsidizing other modes of transport that consumers use from those trucking price increases.
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- jakozaur 5y agoThe site is not available in your country. Bypass: https://web.archive.org/web/20210902052154/https://www.virginiamercury.com/2021/09/02/virginia-maps-out-optional-per-mile-road-fee-program-for-2022-launch/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210902052154/https://www.virgi...
- jefftk 5y agoThe general idea of charging road users partly in proportion to miles traveled makes a lot of sense. But why, every time this is proposed, do people talk about fancy tracking mechanisms? Why can't we just use odometers? I mean, yes, the odometer cannot measure how much of your mileage is in Virginia versus other states, or how much is on what kinds of roads, but it is so much cheaper to implement that I would expect it to still work out much better?
- corty 5y agoBecause in such schemes, tracking peoples' movements is the actual intent, collecting fees is just a nice side-effect.
- aww_dang 5y agoTracking as a prelude to restricting and controlling movement.
- yardie 5y agoI'm purely guessing here. But roads are owned by different government agencies: federal, state, county, municipal, HOAs, and private. And those different agencies might have different ideas on how they want funding. If you drive primarily on town streets, which you pay for through property taxes, your odometer won't know to charge you less. This is based purely on my experience on trying to add bike lanes in my city. It was fairly easy to get it done on our sidestreets, the city owns those, but major streets are federal or state owned and will take years due to bureaucracy.
- cfn 5y agoBig trucks use odometers to enforce driver regulations and there is a whole semi-hidden market for tools and fixes that disable the odometers, even electronic ones. Menaing, they are easy to interfere with. I still agree with the other's posters that tracking is conveniently useful for other things.
- collegeburner 5y ago
- psoots 5y agoDriving to work is not a choice for a lot of people particularly lower class. Our cities our built around cars. As people move out of the city to save money, that makes driving even more necessary and makes public transit less of a viable option. This program relies on a very naive belief that people can control their amount of driving, but we don't control sprawl at an individual level, we don't control infrastructure. Who is this going to benefit but the bougie Tesla owners who work remotely anyway?
- cascom 5y agoRant: Whenever I read the words “pay their fair share” when it comes to tax I stop reading, it’s clear the author doesn’t think for themselves. The goal posts of what is fair are so arbitrary/subjective as to have no meaning when it come to taxes. Just say what is happening, one group (rightly or wrongly) wants another group to bear more of the burden for paying for something.
- tappaseater 5y agoIn my town, when a few of us got rooftop solar, some homes reduced their electric bills significantly, in some cases, to less than zero, so the Light Dept said (publically in meetings) we weren't paying our fair share. The real issue was a threat of loss of revenue. It is fair to ask homes that pay nothing, always pay something, but the term "fair share" is inaccurate and emotive.
- belltaco 5y agoWhy don't you fully cite what they said? The issue is that maintenance of the grid also has costs. So if everyone hovers on net zero(or even pumping electricity back to the grid), who pays the cost for maintaining the electric lines and the salaries of people who work on managing the grid? The grid will go down with no repairs. Money doesn't grow on trees. That's what they mean by fair share, the homes are still connected to the grid, and can use it with their rooftop solar doesn't generate enough power, but they pay nothing or close to nothing when an electric line needs repair, their nonsolar neighbors pay it for them. I don't know if 'not paying the fair share' or 'freeloading' are the right terms, what would you call that situation? If the distribution fee is bothering people, why don't they disconnect the grid and pay nothing?
- cascom 5y agoI don’t think the implication was they shouldn’t pay a fee, but that the term itself is loaded. An honest accounting would indicate the very few of us pay our fair share of anything
- swiley 5y agoOh hell no I’m not installing a GPS tracker in my car. I love Virginia but they can fuck off with that:
- luxuryballs 5y agoIs it just me or does a classic tolls based program seem a lot more fair and less convoluted?
- swiley 5y agoJust raise the fuel tax. Tolls create traffic problems and I’m very careful to avoid them because of that.
- tappaseater 5y agoThat was my first thought. I bet most in VA have EZPass. I am sure it's because they're scared shitless of losing the tax revenues, and want to collect on every road, which doesn't work well with the transponder approach.
- francisofascii 5y agoWhen the world needs higher carbon taxes, policymakers want to sniff out the small glimmer of a carbon tax that currently exists. More fuel efficient vehicles is a good problem to have. It seems like a no brainer to keep raising the gas tax to further incentivize fuel efficiency.
- Zenst 5y agoWhilst the initiative is good, in practice the real impact will be upon those who need a car due to location or health reasons. So their merge mileage will be just as impacted per mile as those who do excess mileage and gets down to those that can pay, pay for it. Equally this takes into no account, how heavy the vechile is, or indeed how impacting enviromentally it is. It add's no incentive at all, and equally, a light small efficient vehicle will be less impacting upon road upkeep than a heavy HGV. Now - what I feel is needed is a quota system in which you get a mileage quota and if you go over that, you pay per extra mile. What are the impacts beyond this - well, this does lay down the foundation to make roads in effect virtual toll-roads and that may well for good or bad, may well incentive private roads now a consumer base has been more conditioned to paying for usage of a road.